Pond Water Leaking Maybe What to do? (pool, cleaning, compare)

[marykate1]

I have a pond which is about 8-10 feet long and around 3-4 feet wide. It is around 2500 gallons.

For some time I have been noticing that the water level of the pond is getting low on daily basis. Today, I can still the water line where it was early yesterday night and today it shows it lost several gallons of water.

How can I even find this issue?

The black linen inside the pond is covered with rocks and stuff. I was wondering if it is leaking water then where is it going? Also, if the water is leaking should it not give out some bubbles or something?

[nybbler]

If the liner is damaged the water is just seeping into the ground. No bubbles.

[Barking Spider]

If you have a pump, filter, waterfall, you could have leakage at those points. I had a spitting fish fountain on the side of my pond, and the base cracked and started pumping water outside the liner. It was pumping out at a pretty good rate even though the crack was pretty small.
Liners become brittle with age, and can crack anywhere. You would not see bubbles because its just going into the ground. I was doing spring cleaning in my old pond and was wiping down the liner and poked a hole with my finger. The liner was shot.
So I expanded the pond and I'm now on my 4th modification.

It may be almost impossible to find the leak unless it is really obvious.

[AksarbeN]

Originally Posted by marykate1

I have a pond which is about 8-10 feet long and around 3-4 feet wide. It is around 2500 gallons.

For some time I have been noticing that the water level of the pond is getting low on daily basis. Today, I can still the water line where it was early yesterday night and today it shows it lost several gallons of water.

How can I even find this issue?

The black linen inside the pond is covered with rocks and stuff. I was wondering if it is leaking water then where is it going? Also, if the water is leaking should it not give out some bubbles or something?

To locate the wet area and depth of water level where the leak is at you can try doing this.

First - If you check around the outside edge of the pond with a long metal rod pushing it into the ground you might be able to notice where more moisture is, thus locating at least which side or area of the pond that has the leak. With careful inspection you might even see that the outside area of the pool is wetter than other areas. If you don’t notice or find any wet spot outside the pool, then the chances are it’s leaking directly downward and thus the cause of the problem is at the base of the pond.

Next - If you do find a wet area, then it’s a good chance that the pool is leaking from the side near that area. "Stop" adding water and after a few days if you notice there is no longer a leak, you’ll know how deep the damaged liner is.

With the depth of the liner damage determined and isolated, you can concentrate looking for the cause of the leak in that area. You’ll have to remove rocks or other items near that spot but you’ve eliminated 90% of the pool.

Last – if the pool continued to leak until most all of the water has gone then assume the leak is on the very bottom of the pool.

This whole process might take a week or more but it’s about the only way to determine a location of the leak and then what is needed to repair it.

Hope that helps.

[marykate1]

Thanks AksarbeN

I did notice that the pond was leaking near the edges only when the waterfall was running. The backside of the pond (grass) is very wet as compared to the surroundings. My husband put from cement/quickrete on it.

I think we might have much bigger issues since I stopped the water fall or now it is still water (not moving) but it still leaked from somewhere. As you said it might be the center of the liner.

Changing the liner will be a big task since we have large rocks inside the pond.

[golfgal]

If it's leaking out the back of your waterfall it might just be a matter of adjusting the rocks or the filter in the waterfall. We had that same thing happen, pond was 1/2 empty when we noticed it--major panic mode . Turned out that we just needed to reposition the rocks covering the well for the waterfall--took about 20 seconds to fix.

[BigJon3475]

I'm not going to say it's not leaking. However, evaporation rates in the winter are much higher than in the summer. I don;t know where you live or what the temperature has been but a general rule is the greater the temperature difference between the water and the outside air the faster the evaporation rate.

95F outside in the summer - 75F water in pond = 20F difference
20F outside temperature in winter - 45F water temperature (if you're lucky and it didn't freeze over) = 25F difference

Wind speeds also increase evaporation rates.

Best of luck figuring it out.